We should welcome the fact that CO2 has risen to “levels not seen on Earth for millions of years,” even if the “fact” is less certain than you might believe. Plants have been trying to cope with a CO2 famine for millions of years, a famine that is finally ending. With self-assurance worthy of Dr. Pangloss, the article implies that pre-industrial CO2 levels, around 280 ppm, were the “best of all possible worlds.” But 280 ppm is much closer to (sea-level) starvation levels of about 150 ppm, when many plants die, than to the optimum levels for plant growth, which greenhouse operators already know are greater than 1000 ppm. There is fossil evidence of CO2 starvation at the end of the last ice age, when CO2 levels dropped to below 200 ppm. Even today’s 400 ppm is far too low for optimum plant growth.

Ninety-five percent of wildfires that ravaged California in the past 100 years were caused by humans, according to a forthcoming study in the International Journal of Wildland Fire. “In most of California, if we could stop ignition during extremely high winds and drought and heat spells, like now, that will be an effective approach,” lead author and U.S. Geological Survey wildfire expert Jon Keeley told The San Jose Mercury News of his soon-to-be-published study. While the public debate largely rages around global warming’s role in wildfires, Keeley’s study shows that human interaction with the landscape, no matter the climate, is causing most fires.

Happer on NYT: The article ends with the silly claim that the “six warmest years on record occurred after 2010.” The alleged record warmings are tenths of a degree or less, comparable to the statistical error. Thermometers have only existed for a few centuries and there are still no reliable networks of thermometers to measure global surface temperatures, although satellite measurements do provide a pretty good global average for the lower atmosphere since the year 1979. There is excellent proxy evidence that Earth’s temperature was warmer than today on several occasions since the end of the last ice age, about 12,000 years ago.

“Why is this so important to Russia?” Morano asked his audience. “Think back to ‘Star Wars’ and Ronald Reagan and 1983, which was a very important point. Reagan gave a speech [about developing SDI], and the media went nuts and said he wanted to expand the arms race into space.” However, Soviet leaders took Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative “very seriously,” he said, including General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev when he came to power.“ The Russians knew they could not afford to compete with the SDI program, and that economically they could not afford this,” Morano said. “Now with Donald Trump’s energy policies and with the U.S. becoming an energy powerhouse, the Russians know this is the worst thing that could ever happen because they can’t afford to keep up economically.” Gorbachev tried repeatedly to persuade Reagan to drop the plans for a space-based missile shield, but to no avail, Morano said

Hans Schellnhuber confessed he was not doing his part in “protecting the climate”. When asked if he had ever calculated his own contribution to climate change, Schellnhuber responded:

"Yes, it is quite high because I myself certainly fly 100 times a year.”

And when asked what car he drives:

"A BMW from the new 1 series. It consumes 6 liters diesel [per 100 km], but that’s only half as much as my previous car.”

Science Skeptical then did a rough calculation of Schellnhuber’s CO2 output using the CO2 calculator provided by the German Ministry of Environment. The result, assuming normal consumer behavior, but flying 100 times a year, each flight on average 2 hours long: 50 tonnes of CO2 each year! The average German emits only about 10 tonnes annually.

YouTube deployed a similar strategy on a CNN video that hosted a debate between television host Bill Nye and founder of Climate Depot Marc Morano. This time a blurb about the “realities of global warming” appeared on the bottom of the screen. In a statement to the Media Research Center, Morano said, “The fact check completely misses the point.This is only the beginning of the appeasement of activists by YouTube.”

He went on to call the YouTube policy “virtue signaling” and said that “This is the end of any hint that the left has any tolerance. That notion is gone now that they are going after conservative content." YouTube clearly decided to pick a side in the controversial debate, using the sentence from Wikipedia: “Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming.”

South African board member and former co-chair, Zaheer Fakir: 'We’ve always operated on the basis of having $10 billion at our disposal and this is the message that has been communicated at various platforms around the world. The lack of clarity on whether those pledges will be fulfilled, coupled with negative exchange rate factors, has resulted in a situation where $10 billion is not the figure we have at our disposal to program — the actual figure is much less.'